In today's radio communications networks where Mobile Broadband (MBB) is implemented, the traffic distribution between users is, and will be, very uneven. According to telecom analysts, typically 90% of the generated traffic is performed by 10% of the users. User equipments used within these networks are mainly Laptop modems, which have a nomadic or fixed behaviour and the traffic is mainly generated indoor. Data from real network shows also that the heavy MBB load in the radio communication network is often created in suburban areas, where “home” usage is dominating.
The radio communications network design in such areas is almost always built as a macro cell network with as reasonably large coverage area per cell/sector since there are e.g. small amount of offices in such areas. The radio communications network is traditionally built for voice services with a relatively low load. With adoption of MBB as a Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) replacement/complement in the homes, drastic changes of the traffic volumes per sector/cell start to happen.
In particular indoor environments there are a large variation of signal quality depending on the placement of a user equipment antenna. When a user equipment consumes a lot of Megabit traffic with a high data rate connection, a lot of system resources such as transmit power, time slots and frequencies can be allocated from the base station to that user equipment. The amount of resources used is mainly based upon bit rate and the signal quality of the connection. This means that a user equipment with bad signal quality can consume much more system resources than one with good quality, to obtain the same bit rate. In other words, some users cost much more than others while doing the same thing.